We Are Owing Rohr 7 Months  Salaries – Pinnick

By Editor

Nigeria Football Federation NFF boss, Amaju Pinnick has revealed the reasons behind the delay in paying national coaches including Super Eagles Manager Gernot Rohr over 7 months salaries.

Pinnick explained during an interview in a TV programme over the weekend that the Federation is currently struggling to meet its financial obligations because the current pandemic situation has affected its principal sponsor Aiteo.

There are also claims that the Super Eagles players are yet to receive bonuses for the just concluded African Cup of Nations qualifiers despite the fact that FIFA and CAF gave the NFF over $1.5million during the pandemic.

“We are not proud to say we are owing, but there are some circumstances in few years that made us not to meet our obligations, but thankfully the players understand that we are always there for them since we came on.

“We gave them all the luxury, especially when they are traveling for games. They travel with chatter flights and I can tell you that any country they go to they stay in the best hotels.”

“In Austria for example, all our key players are there, the ones who are not there called me, I spoke with Chukwueze two days before his surgery and regretted not being with the team.”

“We didn’t say we aren’t going to pay, but what is happening now is what we never dreamt of, when I became the NFF president, the dream was to make the Federation independent, because the government has a lot of challenges and fair play to government, they have done the right thing, because we need to be safe and secured before we can play football.”

“The salaries of the coaches are supposed to be paid by our major sponsor ( Aiteo), but they have challenges, due to the pandemic and others.”

Pinnick also accused the media of giving the Federation a bad image, which made it more difficult for them to get funds from their sponsors.

“When we came on board, we paid coaches from 2007 till date and another thing is that, they created a problem for us. They created this  toxicity and the artificial problems, just to make us look bad.”